Xbox One X 1TB Console

I've been gaming on the xbox One (alongside the PC and PS4) for this whole gen and played plenty of games on it and many Xbox only games but found I had played less multi format games than i had on the 360 due to the power compromises that MS made with the early Xbox One. So when i found out that MS were finally releasing a powerful and capable machine (having seen the Digital Foundry analysis from quite early on) i was very pleased to get myself a powerful new Xbox.I have recently purchased a new 4k TV, having also purchased a Ps4 Pro earlier this year so for me completing the set made perfect sense and i can say i am very happy indeed with the final product.It comes solidly but sensibly packaged and is very easy to unbox and plug in. I had already transferred my games to a 2TB external hard drive and backed up my old xbox settings to that drive. Set-up was thus very easy , the system detected and installed a chunky update (about 750 MB), applied it and then detected the settings on my external drive and offered to apply them. So i then applied them and found my system, my settings and my games all available for me (and was instantly offered to change my visual settings to 4K.. and i also changed the colour space to 10 BIT for HDR at the same time).Once up and running i first signed into some of my apps to test the Ultra HD options (netflix and Amazon) and was very impressed with both. I then set-about running some of my games (which had installed updates for 4k already).The results are pretty spectacular if you're jumping up from the original XB1 and its many games that output at 900P to 4K and high end visuals. I've loaded up a few thus far and have seen big improvements as a combination of HDR, the res and the greater Image Quality. Games like Gears 4 and Assassins Creed Origins have taken a huge jump in quality. I’ve now played a big range of my games and it really does improve so many so noticeably. It also upscales your old 360 and original Xbox games (backwards compatibility being another feature of this system). Alongside this it stays very quiet , even when gaming .. perfect for a media player as well as gaming system.Overall i am very impressed with this. I've liked the constant improvements to the XB1 since the somewhat botched launch in 2013 but one thing they couldn't overcome was a relative lack of power.. this machine has changed all that and delivered a powerful and impressively engineered console.

A few months with this console after upgrading from the standard Xbox one has shown me some critical points that I want to make. First is the console will never stop amazing you, at least at first. The console is some what restricted by what games are truly optimised for what's its capable of, some of the games look stunning and run better than they do on the Xbox one, but I have found that the biggest issue with this console is stability while running damanding games at enhanced resolution. After a while the console gets really hot, which is not unexpected but I have found that is then starts to struggle and occasionally even sometimes lags or sturters, but again I want to stress that this happens on rare occasions on certain games after about a solid 40 to and hours gameplay. The best features that the console brings is the super sampling, going back to games such a BF4 is frankly a shock, it dramaticly makes a difference and you certainly enjoy an game more when the textures are more enhanced. This brings me onto my next point, the console is significantly quiter the previous gen console, when your running less demanding and better optimised games the console doesn't make any noise at all.The exterior of the console is in my opinion the best yet, it gets rid of any unnecessary casing and leaves it with a sleek design that is discreet and doesn't look out of place, however I understand that some people like it to stand out and have a cool design so I hope that later down the line they release some designed editions.Going off topic for a moment, I want to talk about the big benefit of Xbox live gold, with the new addition of the game pass gaming on the Xbox one in general has just got a lot easier and cheaper, at first the subscription method seemed like a way for Microsoft to exploit gamers by tying all of the games to a pay or no play system, but I relieved that, that is not the case. The game pass is by far the cheapest way to play games today and if you include the EA subscription then your all set really. I feel that this an important selling point when considering the Xbox one X as it almost allows for the larger price.In summary I would recommend this to anyone that is upgrading from Xbox one but I would also recommend waiting till the price comes down a bit maybe wait untill its about £350. I honestly wouldnt recommend this to some one thats has come from a PS4 as I don't think you would be happy with this platform for what it offers at the moment. However Microsoft have been making some big strides in the right direction, so I would not rule it out for the future.